Yamaha adds a premium Blu-ray player to its plush Aventage line

Yamaha recently unveiled its all new premium Blu-ray player, the Aventage BD-A1040. Following the design traits of the rest of the Aventage family, the player’s chiq chassis looks more like a top-tier receiver or amplifier than the flimsy plastic fare flooding the lower rungs of the Blu-ray market, and it’s designed with expansive compatibility to serve as both the video and audio hub of your home theater.

The A1040 is loaded with premium components inside and out, starting with a sleek aluminum front panel designed to dampen vibrations, encasing a 192kHz/32 bit digital to audio converter (DAC) with gold-plated terminals. When it comes to audio playback, the player will spin your older hi-res discs like Super Audio CDs, as well as hi-res audio files like WAV, ALAC, and FLAC files with a top resolution of 192kHz/24bit, and, of course, also handles top high-res home theater codecs like Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master audio.

Videophiles can get their fix in a multitude of ways as well, with access to virtually every video format you’re likely to throw at it, from normal Blu-ray and 3D Blu-ray file formats, to DivX Plus HD and the new AVCHD files from hi-def cameras, without the need for conversion.

The player includes Wi-Fi connection (of course), as well as support for DLNA for pulling media from NAS storage devices and the like, and Miracast to stream videos, audio, and pics from Android smartphones. In addition, it includes Bluetooth to allow wireless audio streaming from your smartphone.

One thing you won’t find in the A1040, however, is an app collection worth mentioning. The only one listed on Yamaha’s site is Vudu, and without stalwarts like Netflix and Hulu Plus — services you should enjoy while you still can — that makes for a big hole in the system. We’re not sure if Yamaha is planning to add more apps in a future updates, but we’ve reached out to the company, and will update as soon as we hear back.

The premium player also comes with a premium price, listed at $450, which puts it in mighty company, though it falls short of top tier offerings from Oppo’s family, such as the $1,200 BDP-105. If you’d like to add the BD-A1040 to your setup, the player is available now from multiple outlets online and in stores.